Aseem's Blog
Leap over the bounds…
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Spending money… |
Was googling sometime back… and stumbled upon these amazing lines by Milton Freidman :
There are four ways in which you can spend money. You can spend your own money on yourself. When you do that, why then you really watch out what you’re doing, and you try to get the most for your money. Then you can spend your own money on somebody else. For example, I buy a birthday present for someone. Well, then I’m not so careful about the content of the present, but I’m very careful about the cost. Then, I can spend somebody else’s money on myself. And if I spend somebody else’s money on myself, then I’m sure going to have a good lunch! Finally, I can spend somebody else’s money on somebody else. And if I spend somebody else’s money on somebody else, I’m not concerned about how much it is, and I’m not concerned about what I get. And that’s government.
At the end of these lines… I just pushed back myself, with a slight pressure on the cushion of my chair and inclining my head off its obvious position… i said to myself, “How True!”. Am sure you did the same! :D
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Farmer ‘turns bullock’ for survival |
While you were enjoying and celebrating this festive season… the ganesh chaturthi… expressing jubilation over the high decibel sound of bursting of fire crackers and bomb explosions… in some remote village, there was some poor farmer forced to act as a bullock to plough his fields. And even after your festive celebrations are over and you are back to your routine life (still enjoying with kitty parties, office parties, partying at CCD… or basically trying to find any and every dumb reason to party) the difference is that, this farmer as many others, still continues to plough…!!!
And may be one day, one of them might even commit a suicide and you will prefer to turn over the newspaper page that describes this plight of the farmers… Just because you don’t want to spoil your mood early in the morning. But the truth is that, for any other time, you would do nothing different… giving yourself some other stupid reason to escape the news item.
Yes, it does happen… the city man of India conveniently skips from seeing the dark and gloomy face of India… the India that’s still struggling to only make a living. And for those who do care, may be just like you and me… won’t take any step forward than to write a small blog post, and forget about it the very next day. Probably only blaming the Indian government, cursing corruption, nature and all those myriad reasons that one could find to elude his/her responsibility. And if we all do manage to run off scot free, we hate to accept that we are fooling none other than our own selves.
For the last couple of days if you were not watching only a MTV, SONY or a STAR and managed to switch your TV to any news channel… CNN-IBN has been repeatedly airing this story… Farmer ‘turns bullock’ for survival.
CNN-IBN covers -
It’s festival season in Maharashtra, but celebrations are not for all, especially farmers in Vidarbha.
Heavy downpour and flooding after years of continuous drought in the region have played havoc in the life of poverty-ridden farmers, and one of them even has to act as a bullock to plough his fields for survival.
Shankar Dabe Rao, a cotton farmer in Maharshtra’s Buldhana District has been forced to fill-in for one of his bullocks, which was washed away in the recent floods.
The waters took with it not just the bull, which was bought with borrowed money, but also Shankar’s crops, his only means of re-paying the loan.
And to break this cycle of ever increasing debt, Shankar says, he had no choice but to take the place of his bull and ask his 72-year-old father to help him plough the field.
“I am waiting for the government’s rehabilitation package. My financial situation is so bad that I have even thought of committing suicide,” said Shankar Dabe Rao, the cotton farmer.
The news reveals that over 150 farmers have committed suicide in this region in the month after the Prime Minister’s visit… yet there are no major signs of relief… That even after realisation could prove to be just too little and too late!
A few months back, I was watching a similar coverage… NDTV showing teens partying at CCD, and all of them unresponsive and indurate towards the situation of the farmers… just about a 40kms away from the place they were partying at. I sometimes wonder, whether our youth is really so dumb that they are unaware of the dingy fabric of the poor India? Or are they just too smart to overlook it all for their own merry reasons!
We still remain unaware of the ground realities, the deplorable facts of the bare India… still enjoying our party mood… skipping and escaping articles like these… wearing the same cotton clothes these farmers have contributed to, yet dismissing them even of a miniscule consideration in our daily lives… how much more callous and insensitive can we get??!!!
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Create your own Search Engine |
www.googlealive.com gives you a chance to rebrand Google…
Log on to the site… enter a new name… and get your own re-branded google!!!
LOl! :)
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Ganpati Bappa Morya |
Festivals like Ganesh Chaturthi and Diwali have always got Indians closer. Whether in times of the struggle for India’s Independence or today after the 7/11 Mumabi bomb blasts. India irrespective of religion, caste and region has shared a unified thought and realisation of joy.
It’s for these festivals that India today stands united proposing its belief in god and in the people of India.
I thought I should share this above picture with my blog readers here. This one that drew all my attention off the other news items on the front page of today’s Sunday Times, shows a Ganesh pandal being setup in Ahmedabad based on the theme of 7/11 Mumbai train blasts.
India I am proud of you… Happy Ganesh Chaturthi!!!
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Review: Scrapboy… The Orkut Messenger |
Scrapboy has been around for quite sometime now… Well for those who have not heard of it and been scrapping friends through orkut, this is the new and supposed to be popular instant messenger for orkut.
Yahoo, MSN, AOL, Skype have been great tools to be in touch with friends. But suddenly with the advent of orkut.com ‘scrap’ has changed meaning from being useless or a refuse to something much more worthy and awaited! Though scrapping, scrapbooks and other new related terminology have got popular, the feel of real-time chatting is somehow lost. That is where the instant messenger, scrapboy makes you feel home.
Scrapboy has suddenly caught all the attention and popularity in a small time span. Certainly because of orkut, than for itself. When I reviewed this software, I found that it was more of a hype, and it still has a long way to go…
After receiving an email from a friend to download scrapboy, I logged on to their website: www.scrapboy.com.
The download file size was just below 25MB. The size didn’t bother me much as I have an unlimited 256kbps connection. But for dial-up users, am sure this fact will suck big-time. They rather did wait for it to show up on their favorite tech magazine CD/DVD. And even if they do, I am sure its not worth the wait or download.
In a few minutes I had the setup on my PC which announced itself as beta version 1.0. I installed the software, after a few installation hiccups due to security warning by Norton. But no big issues. Soon, I logged in with my orkut id, it loaded my friends list, I played around with the interface, tried to search for some tweaking options (didn’t find any)… And soon I realised that I was looking at some dumb piece of software. But mind you… I do believe it has great potential.
The following is the review of the software with all the Pros and Cons listed and justified for.
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And my India simply watched them die… |
Just imagine yourself into this…
You take your family out on a drive to enjoy the nature in this beautiful rainy season or to a local temple to pray to god for the well-being of your family and India. On the way, while crossing a bridge, the water level suddenly rises and your new Tata Indica is soon submerged under water. You with your family climb atop the car and cry for help. People gather around the river banks watching your plight. You see the forest minister of the state standing across the river, you feel relieved. You know that someone will save you now. But after being strangled for 8 hrs… amidst the river, you are swept away by the vigorously flowing waters… and India just watches you…die…
If you feel that this story is just for imagination, sorry to say, this is what happened to a family in Jodhpur, Rajasthan, a couple of days back. Five members of the family drowned while the insensitive crowd simply saw them struggle for life.
You can get more details here: http://in.news.yahoo.com/060822/211/66vhb.html
While this situation stranded the family struggling for life for eight hours… I wonder where the media was all that while. Is it the same media that took the whole nation into the pit for more than 24 hrs when ‘Master Prince’ had accidentally made his way down in it? Where did the media go… the same media that has become more of an entertainment medium. Who prefer to show the IPS officer dancing as Radha, the married UP woman who announces herself as wife of Wasim Akram. Where did this media go which relayed even the pettiest and nonsense issues and yet missed this one? I bet they should have got this incident live… and see the resentment towards the government amongst the citizens of India.
While the whole issue in not of the media not showing this incident live, but the government not taking appropriate measures to save the lives of those dead now. It’s such a disgrace to know, that after having a third of a day nothing much was done to rescue the lives of the family stranded amidst the waters. What a sorry comparison to the heroic efforts taken by so many army and police men to save ‘Prince’. And here to save the life of five… just two policemen! I want to ask the Rajasthan government, rather India… where was the rescue team? Where were the helicopters, the choppers?
The money of the tax payers, is only squandered and splurged by ministers over luxury and joy rides in their helicopters. They could have easily air-lifted the marooned family. It’s a shame to see my India play the part of a mute spectator and now live with its self enforced psychological emasculation.
I have just one question to raise… If the same forest minister who was callously watching this incident, was amidst the waters instead of the family… would my India still simply watch him die?
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REVIVING PATRIOTISM IN INDIA |
Let’s have a small retrospective session. Ok I won’t stress your memory. Let’s talk about just a day back in time. So what did you really do on India’s 59th Independence Day? Sat at home all day enjoying your holiday? Ok… made it for the function for the flag hoisting? Is it enough? Neways, even if you did that, I am glad. But I can bet most of you just, looked up to the flag in great pride may be for a few moments and then you were back onto your couch watching some latest pirated cd/dvd movie and enjoying the holiday. Your feelings need to extend from those few moments you looked up to the flag to your entire day, from this one day in the year to the entire year, and yes certainly for your lifetime. And remember you are not the first one to do this… Martyrs have lived, died and relived in our hearts being as true Indians. Just an Indian citizenship doesn’t really make you an Indian dear!
The very fact that you are reading these lines now, is that I have got you interested. Those who weren’t have left long behind. Well yesterday I just managed to write a few lines on reviving patriotism in India. I hope that it can motivate you enough to put these thoughts into your actions…
Here is goes –
India the land of the martyrs who have embraced the gallows for their ideals, where every drop in the freedom fighter’s blood has fought not for itself but for the nation, has today become indigent instead of indigenous of ‘patriotism’. Yes I am talking of India where patriotism needs to be revived and redefined.
We all probably remember patriotism when there is an Indo-Pak cricket match and when terrorists bomb our trains. But we definitely forget it when we cast our vote in the elections, when a week long hungry beggar asks for a rupee, when we shamelessly throw garbage on the roads and yet so many times more… Patriotism is observed as nothing else than the ‘pain on the prick of a pin’. It is rather believed to be a formality, a formality of saluting the national flag and 52 seconds of freezed stature during the national anthem. May be even a freezed heart with no gratitude for the martyrs because of whom we are living off so well.
The serenity and peace of the country is often challenged more by internal perturbances than by external aggression. The diversity in the cultures of its subjects unfortunately is the prominent cause for animosity between religious antagonists in India. There is so much difference that a common man belonging to one religion finds in another man of other religion though being the very same, an INDIAN. India has subjects following a number of religions which have their own organizations to spread the greatness of their religion that they have realized. Such organizations are very important in making a prosperous and patriotic India. As their aim is to pay heed to the needs of their followers. In this way every Indian will be benefited in some or the other way. It should be also important for these organizations to publicise patriotism as they find themselves amongst the biggest organizations in India. But sadly it never happens so. Religious antagonism apart, we still distance ourselves with each other with castism. While celebrating the 59th Independence day, India wants to forget castes and the differences caused by them. But probably the politicians do not want it to happen. Reservation for lower castes is one issue, where politicians have made every effort to pursue their own filthy political interests rather than trying to solve the issue.
What we cannot envisage is the communal disharmony and religious discrimination that infiltrates into the society defying all norms of humanity. This results to communal riots stupendously engineered by the so called religious patrons – the politicians. But one cannot blame the whole breed, as there exists a minority that puts in efforts to make a more socially stable India. While the majority tries to draw mileage from every loop hole in the society and engages itself in building heavens of comfort and luxury, constructed on the debris of human sanctity. For every soldier who sacrifices his life for the nation they echo only four words, “WE will fight back”. But in that ‘WE’ they are nowhere!
The common man of India is deemed to be a puppet in the hands of the politicians, but in reality he finds his own profit in every act provoked by them. And what gets lost in this ‘unethical symbiosis’ is again patriotism! While talking of India, one major class of people can be seldomely forgotten. It is the economically and thus as a result socially impotent and backward class. It is rightly said – An empty stomach cannot blow the seditious sound of the war bugle. Thus one cannot expect them to play an important role in reforming patriotism. This situation should be unraveled in course of time and not suddenly. What cannot be conquered should be endured. Patriotic emotions cannot be engendered in a windfall, they will have to be engraved on tender hearts that will remain placid in the storms of the enigmatic future. Our education policies thus need to be revalued and reformed. More national awareness and respect should be embedded into the scholastic curriculum. The paraphernalia could be nothing more than a sincere devotion for making a patriotic India.
Now let us consider what patriotism should be in true sense. Patriotism need not have a mass motive, it need not be national. Small things and actions persuaded with a notion of doing good to other countrymen is patriotism. Patriotism should be embibed by us to put into our day to day lives. As Elphinstone proposed ‘Divide eta rule’, that is, the path towards conquering an empire is division. Thus we will have to give up the ignoble thinking that we have nurtured towards the society. That is the social divisions made by ourselves need to be abolished. Or it won’t take long for another British Empire to crack us down.
Not only being patriotic towards your country is patriotism but honoring our opponents’ patriotic feelings is also a facet of the diamond, patriotism. Patriots don’t talk about taking life but of giving life for their country. Patriotism is not all about attack, its about defense, its about counterattack. At last I feel, what cannot describe patriotism better than this is – patriotism is like a needle that joins and unites and not a scissor that cuts and divides.
Written By:
A true Indian by heart and soul. (Mentioning by birth does not matter)
Aseem N
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Trip to Mumbai – to IIT Powai |
Right in my twelfth it was my dream to study in any one of the IITs, but sadly could not crack the JEE exam. So finally I had to do what most of my batchmates did. Joined Goa Engineering College. The not so bright students (now including me) didn’t really have a choice. Now that I know its ranked 75th in India… ok I am there somewhere! :)
Our faculty here… I always admired them for being so meticulous over the fundas and concepts but never really wanted to be like them. I was happy with my five pointer sorta life. But suddenly there was this hype about selecting a project for our final year. I don’t know what hit me, but I thought this would be my last chance to really study something in my four years of engineering life. Most of which has been spent sitting and chatting in the college canteen.
So we spoke over to our professor and managed to contact a professor from IIT Powai. We decided to leave for IIT on the immediate weekend. Our college has a MoU with the institution that allows use its resources for our final year project.
WAY TO MUMBAI
Just as ideal students should be doing, we attended the morning half of college, and left to board the Konkan Kanya train. We spent most of our time, standing and sitting at the door of the train, watching the scenic beauty… the forests and rivers that passed by. It was so very refreshing.
I havnt been to Mumbai many times. Except for a few trips to Fort, Juhu and Goregaon. But always traveled with my family. It was more fun traveling like this with friends. We reached Mumbai early in the morning. To avoid rush we took the immediate next local to Kanjur-Marg. I had never traveled by a Mumbai local and this one looked like one being with all the sane people around. Most of them in deep sleep. Probably they had to get to the last station or they had some kinda body clock that would wake them up when their station would arrive. Otherwise in Mumbai no one really bothers about people around. So the short journey by the local was quite easy I thought.
All early in the morning, the guy besides me was struggling to be awake. So we enquired with him of when the train would reach Kanjur-Marg, the station closest to IIT Powai. 4secs was all that we got to get down off the train. There was not much rush, so we didn’t feel the run for time. Right outside the station was a multiplex, Adlabs Huma. We knew where exactly to come in the evening once our work was all over. We had tea, freshened up and took a rikshaw to take us to IIT Powai.
ACROSS THE GATES OF IIT POWAI
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Main Zinda Hoon…!!! |
To all those regular blog readers, sorry for not blogging for quite some time now! You cant really complain though. Right in my first blog post, I had made it clear that I am a very lazy writer…
Newez… I was soaked up in my academics and some website designing & development projects. Also busy coding a community website. Ho ho nothing to beat orkut, but definitely only one of its kind. Coding it all alone is sometimes a real mess. But PHP my first love, doesnt really disappoint me. :P It will surely take quite a while for it to be up and running.
By the way, had been to IIT Powai for my final year project. Will post my trip details soon…
